1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for manufacturing products in a plurality of types having different specifications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Film manufacturing apparatus, for example, operate by drawing a film blank from a film roll, cutting the film blank transversely and longitudinally into a plurality of films, winding the films around respective cores thereby to produce rolls, and then supplying the rolls to a next process.
The rolls thus manufactured are available in a number of types having different specifications including different core diameters, different roll widths, different film lengths, different winding directions (rolls with inner coated surfaces and rolls with outer coated surfaces), etc. The film manufacturing apparatus are designed to produce a plurality of types of products in a mixed fashion to meet recent demands for the production of products in many types and in small quantities.
It has been desired to supply the film manufacturing apparatus with cores in a suitable component form efficiently and accurately depending on the types of rolls to be manufactured.
Heretofore, product manufacturing apparatus for manufacturing various products by supplying components in different types to intermediate products are designed to check whether such components are defective or not. However, the product manufacturing apparatus are supposed to be supplied with components in appropriate types, and do not perform a matching process for determining whether supplied components match intermediate products or not. Therefore, if some failure is discovered in the process of manufacturing products on the product manufacturing apparatus, then the feed line thereof needs to be shut down, adversely affecting the overall manufacturing process.
Film rolls supplied to the film manufacturing apparatus may possibly contain defective regions and roll-to-roll joints. Positional information representing such defective regions and roll-to-roll joints are supplied from a management apparatus to the film manufacturing apparatus, in which films corresponding to those defective regions and roll-to-roll joints are removed.
In the film manufacturing apparatus, since films are cut in transverse and longitudinal directions and fed successively, desired films cannot be removed unless the sequence in which the films are fed is accurately recognized. Particularly in a system arranged to supply products to a single feed line from a plurality of feed paths, it is extremely difficult to accurately determine which products are to be removed.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method of and an apparatus for manufacturing products in a plurality of types having different specifications efficiently by supplying appropriate components to intermediate products.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of and an apparatus for manufacturing a plurality of products so as to be able to supply the products in a desired sequence to a feed line.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a method of and an apparatus for manufacturing products so as to be able to easily and reliably process the manufactured products.
The above and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which preferred embodiments of the present invention are shown by way of illustrative example.